Monthly Archives: May 2008

The Democratic National Committee’s Rules Committee decided today, following a televised hearing, to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations at the party’s August convention, but give them all a half vote apiece. This was construed as a defeat for Hillary Clinton, who gained delegates but, pundits say, not enough. Later, it was reported that the Obama campaign is negotiating with Hillary to give her a cabinet-level position supervising health care »

Barack Obama announced tonight at a press conference that he is leaving Trinity United Church of Christ. Apparently Rev. Pfleger was the last straw. Obama’s explanation was characteristically self-pitying and evasive: It’s clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict »

Kobe Bryant has led the Los Angeles Lakers back to the NBA finals. As a result, Bryant is once again the toast of the league. An article in the current issue of Sports Illustrated, for example, contends that no current NBA player can compare to Bryant and implies that the proper comparison is to Michael Jordan. As for Lebron James, the article quotes one NBA scout as follows: “The difference »

The widespread conviction among Democrats that we are destined to fail in Iraq was the key to Barack Obama’s emergence as Presidential front-runner. He postured himself as the candidate who had opposed the war from the beginning. But what helped Obama in the Democratic primaries may prove his undoing in the general election. Through the months when Obama’s dedication to failure was bringing him closer to the nomination, conditions in »

Kathryn Jean Lopez finds Barack Obama befuddled by Hollywood wizardry on his visit to Mount Rushmore last night: He express[ed] curiosity about the filming of a chase scene in “North by Northwest,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1959 classic starring Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint that included a death-defying scramble over Rushmore’s presidential faces. “How did they get up there in the first place?” he asked ranger Wesley Jensen. “They didn’t. It »

This week, the Supreme Court decided two employment law cases involving the issue of “retaliation.” Retaliation occurs when an employer takes adverse employment against an employee because he or she complained about discrimination or otherwise exercised rights under an anti-discrimination law. The issue in one case was whether a Reconstruction-era statute banning racial discrimination also prohibits retaliation. The Court held by a 7-2 majority (Justices Thomas and Scalia dissenting) that »

Assaf Gal of PrimeTimePolitics has posted the one-hour video of Mark Steyn on Ottawa’s Michael Coren Show. Mark and guest host Tim Denis talk about everything from the post 9/11 world to multiculturalism and the Human Rights Commission case against him. Assaf describes it as “another brilliant hour with Mark Steyn.” To comment on this post go here. »

The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries Tom Joscelyn’s review of Andrew McCarthy’s important book Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. The new issue of National Review carries Bruce Thornton’s review of the book (subscribers only) as well. Both reviews are excellent. McCarthy was the chief federal prosecutor of the perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center attack, their spiritual leader Omar Abdel-Rahman (“the blind sheikh”) foremost among »

Earlier today I participated in a conference call with Senator Jon Kyl and Randy Scheunemann of the McCain campaign. The purpose of the call was to respond to the Obama campaign’s attacks on statements McCain made yesterday: I can tell you that it [the Surge] is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now »

My friend, fellow Dartmouth alum, and novelist-screenwriter Roger Simon has a post up called “Mirengoff in 08.” He’s referring, of course, to the Dartmouth election campaign which, mercifully, is drawing to a close. Meanwhile another Dartmouth alum, Angus King the former governor of Maine, states the case for our Parity Slate and explains why the lawsuit we pledge to maintain is the only way of preserving parity: No one is »

With the Democrats about to resolve the delegate dispute in Florida and Michigan, and with their primary season about to end, it’s quite possible that the Obama-Clinton clash of the titans will soon expire. When this happens, the party will begin to rally behind Obama, and his standing in the head-to-head polls with McCain (already fairly good) may well improve. At that point, we’ll hear more of the already persistent »

One of our readers makes the point that the Scott McClellan-Peter Osnos affair has the earmarks of communist thought control, as in Darkness at Noon. In this process, one offers the prisoner better food, to be sure, but most importantly helps him understand where his thinking was wrong, and then leads him to “right thinking.” The process is easier if, as here, the captive’s knowledge of fact and his convictions »

…are beginning to seep into the mainstream media. Today, the Washington Post reports on its interview with CIA Director Michael Hayden, in which Hayden described the problems that have beset al Qaeda: In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core leadership. While cautioning that al-Qaeda remains a serious threat, Hayden »

Several readers wrote in response to “Motor City madness” yesterday that the video of the encounter of Detroit City Council member Monica (Mrs. John) Conyers was no longer available in our original post. Reader Corky Boyd kindly found us another video via Son of Baldwin. On Tuesday the Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Rosman caught up with the lesson in civility Mrs. Conyers had received from 13-year-old Keiara Bell. When reading »

Yesterday, I said it will be interesting to compare the degree to which the MSM reports on Scott McClellan’s new book, including its discussion of the Iraq war, with the negligible extent to which it has reported on Douglas Feith’s inside look at the same war, as well as the overall war on terrorism. The early returns are now in, and they come as no surprise. As this report by »

Amazingly enough, there are still a few remote areas in the world where primitive tribes live without any contact with civilization. What is odd, I think, is that this is widely considered a good thing. There was a news story today about the aerial spotting of such a group in Brazil, near the border with Peru: One of Brazil’s last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western »